Crucible may be creaking but TV snooker is timeless
Journalists were rammed into what appeared to be a cupboard, and players were obliged to train with Rishi Persad standing in front of the practice table
It is that time of year when you draw the curtains against the afternoon light, sit down on the sofa, switch on the telly and, several hours later, find you are still there, bewitched, bewildered, ever so slightly bothered.
“You have our permission to join us,” Hazel Irvine said as she introduced one of the earlyafternoon sessions from the BBC’S coverage of the World Snooker Championship. And, in these days of working from home, you can imagine the conversations that then ensued across the country between boss and employee.
“When you said you were working from home, you were meant to be working, not watching snooker,” the boss says.
“I know, but Hazel said it was OK,” comes the reply.
Thus, thanks to Irvine’s say-so, afternoon after afternoon you find yourself mesmerised by the pots, the misses and, according to the commentator John Virgo, the “deep screws, reverse side, to the inch”.
What is so glorious about the BBC’S snooker coverage is that, for the 48 times the world title has been scrapped over at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, little seems to have changed. Sure, the pall of smoke that once hung over the tables has dissipated, the clear liquid the players drink during breaks tends to be water rather than vodka and the adverts on the participants’ waistcoats are now written in Chinese script. Yet the angles are the same, the camera work has not developed and Ronnie O’sullivan is, as ever, the favourite.
Though it appears such an apparently unyielding snooker landscape is about to be fractured. The Crucible itself is no longer what it was. It is creaking at the seams, ageing before our eyes; backstage, according to Iranian player Hossein Vafaei, it stinks like a Thames Water discharge pipe.
And it seems that not for much longer will the world title be decided in its environs. We know this because Barry Hearn, the godfather of the game, told us.
Speaking to Irvine in the atrium next to the Crucible that acts as the BBC studio during coverage, he warned that he may not extend the contract with the Crucible beyond 2027 – precisely 50 years since John Spencer won the first title there – unless the venue is rebuilt. Watched on by a bunch of earnest middle-aged snooker fans, Hearn said he would like to carry on in Sheffield, that Sheffield wanted him to carry on there, but to do that they would have to increase the capacity.
“I’m fed up of telling people there aren’t any tickets left,” he said of an auditorium that holds just 980. Which means he may have to move it, he added. So, like it or not, the answer appears to be Saudi Arabia. Which has the slight drawback that, even if it takes place in some 25,000-seat state-of-the-art auditorium, the earnest middle-aged fans watching him speak will not be able to afford to be there.
“It’s all about the money,” he twinkled. As if, with Hearn, we ever thought it was about anything else.
Some, though, were not having the idea of a move. Shaun Murphy, the 2005 world champion, who was doing some punditry for the BBC between rounds, dismissed the idea the tournament could be staged anywhere else. “It’s our ‘Theatre of Dreams’,” he said.
Perhaps not the best analogy. Like Old Trafford, the other Theatre of Dreams, the Crucible is living on its heritage, a venue marooned in its own past. You got the occasional glimpse of its inadequacies from the television coverage. There were shots from the tight backstage area of journalists rammed into what appeared to be a cupboard, of players being obliged to train with Rishi Persad standing in front of the practice table as he presented the BBC’S nightly highlights.
And then there is the comical manner in which the playing area is divided in half by a screen in the early stages of the tournament, cramping up the participants as they go for the double-cannon backspin. All through the first week you could see it, players lining up a critical shot only to have their concentration broken as a round of applause breaks out from those watching the game on the other side of the hoarding.
Indeed, there was one camera angle while O’sullivan was demolishing Jackson Page in the first round which showed that a fair number of those who had managed to get hold of one of Hearn’s tickets found themselves on the wrong side of the screen as the greatest player of his and any other was recording his 1,261st century break. For them, this was less the Theatre of Dreams, more the Theatre of I Hope to God I Remembered to Press the TV Record Button.
Mind, for those of us stuck on the sofa at home, such issues were irrelevant. We still got to see every moment, got to hear old champions such as Steve Davis, Ken Doherty and Dennis Taylor eulogising about perfect pots, or, in the case of Stephen Hendry, getting excited about safety shots.
The truth is, we telly viewers will be able to carry on wasting our April afternoons whether the championship comes from Sheffield, Shanghai or Saudi. So long as Hazel Irvine gives us her permission, that is.*